`Illegitimacy’ defined

May 25, 1992 12:00 am

Dear Mr. Quayle has gone and botched things up again. Is Murphy Brown or any other unwed mother going to be less of a parent without the presence of a male entity to call “daddy”? Illegitimate children should not be those which, by definition, are born to parents who are not legally married. Rather, as suggested by an alternate definition in Webster’s (illegitimate: illogical), children who will not see love in the home or children that are unwanted and not given care should be considered the true illegitimacies of this nation.

It seems rather odd and anachronistic to believe that a man is a necessity in the rearing of children. In Medieval times the children rarely saw the father — he was the provider. In present times, women are not dependent upon his provision. Granted, it would ease the financial strain on the mother were a second income available and would perhaps allow more time spent with the children, but this does not imply that a husband is a necessity. Children raised by a single mother are not neglected simply because a father isn’t also present.

What Quayle fails to see is the tragedy in which millions of children find themselves; in a home which may or may not have both parents, in which they are not loved, in which they go to bed hungry because one or both parents has squandered any money on alcohol, or worse, those children who have been abandoned by parents who could not care less about their children’s welfare and have left them without even a home.

It seems pathetic that the vice president assumes a man is an integral part of a family and that he can look down upon the single parents of this nation who are working their hardest to provide a comfortable and secure home with love, when the truly illegitimate children, those born into an atmosphere of unlove and neglect, are those who deserve your pity and your help. Erin Perry Sorrento